John Green's Key To Writing? Using Different Keyboards

John Green's written such celebrated works as The Fault In Our Stars and Paper Towns, but not without sacrificing copious keyboards along the way.

In a HuffPost Live conversation on Thursday, the young adult novelist revealed his "weirdest" writing ritual: He develops working relationships with the keyboards at his desktop computer.

"I switch keyboards every draft and then if -- here's my problem -- if something isn't going well, I throw out the keyboard," he confessed to host Nancy Redd.

"Keyboards are only like five bucks," he added, but if a piece of writing is going well, he'll "keep the keyboard."

Otherwise, the writer turns to people when putting pen to page -- or hand to keyboard. He explained:

I'm very, very lucky as a writer to have so many readers in my life. Like, readers I can connect to through Twitter or Tumblr or YouTube or whatever, so I can read their comments and their posts about what interests them and what's difficult for them, what they care about, how they care about it. That's my biggest inspiration: that community of readers.

And then there's reading, which he considers to be "the best apprenticeship we have as writers."

"It's how we figure out how people have used language to make stories live inside of people's heads," he said, "so those are big inspirations for me."